Man Says His Cousin Broke the Rules on Family Hunting Land — and Shot a Young Buck Anyway

A lot of hunting arguments are really about one thing: respect. Not the kind people talk about when they’re trying to sound tough, but the simple kind that says if somebody lets you hunt their ground, you follow their rules. A hunter in r/Hunting shared exactly the kind of story that gets under people’s skin fast. He said his cousin was allowed back on the family farm after already causing problems in the past, and then went right back to doing the same kind of thing all over again.

According to the post, the family had a deer management plan in place and one of the rules was clear: do not shoot immature bucks. The poster said his cousin knew that, knew there was no shortage of deer in the area, and had plenty of tags. He also said the cousin had not been allowed to hunt there for four years after previously shooting a spike and a 4-point, which tells you this was not some brand-new misunderstanding. This sounded more like a man being given another chance and burning it.

The part that really made hunters in the comments bristle was how avoidable the whole thing seemed. The poster said his cousin was sitting in a box blind with optics “very capable” of seeing what the deer was, with an hour or more of daylight left, and still took the shot anyway. He also said the cousin had seen six does before shooting the buck, which mattered because they were trying to reduce doe numbers on the property. In other words, this was not a rushed last-light guess or a case of somebody having no other legal opportunity.

Then came the part that made it even worse. The hunter said his cousin gut-shot the deer with a .300 Win Mag. That detail lit up the thread because it made the whole thing feel even sloppier. Guys can argue all day about antler rules and management plans, but when you pile a bad hit on top of ignoring the landowner’s expectations, you lose a whole lot of goodwill in a hurry. A mistake is one thing. A chain of bad decisions starts to look a lot more like a pattern.

The comments were not exactly gentle. One person called it “blatant disrespect,” and plenty of others agreed that if a man is lucky enough to hunt somebody else’s place, he ought to be asking what counts as a shooter before the season ever starts. Another commenter broke it down even more plainly, saying the cousin was well aware of the rules and “simply doesn’t give a damn.” That was really the mood of the thread. Most people did not see this as confusion. They saw it as somebody doing what he wanted because he figured family would smooth it over later.

There were also a few comments that cut right to the heart of the problem by pointing out this was not the first warning sign. One hunter said the poster already knew his cousin’s character from years earlier and should have expected this outcome. Another said three wrongfully taken deer is three strikes, especially when the guy had already shown he would not respect the rules. That part hits home for a lot of folks because family has a way of making people ignore behavior they would never tolerate from a friend or neighbor.

That’s what makes this one feel so familiar. On paper, it’s about a young buck. In real life, it’s about what happens when people think shared blood means shared permission to do whatever they want. Family hunting setups can be some of the best arrangements a man ever has, but they can also turn sour faster than anything when one person keeps acting like the rules are only for everybody else. Once that happens, every invite starts feeling like a gamble.

A few commenters tried to keep it practical. One said if the cousin had to be invited because of family dynamics, he should never have been hunting alone. Another hunter said whenever he gets permission to hunt family or friends’ property, he makes a point to ask what they consider shootable and follows it. That kind of comment probably got the most respect in the thread, because it reflects how experienced hunters usually handle land that is not theirs. Communication is not complicated. Ego is what makes it complicated.

By the end of it, the feeling was pretty simple: the buck was not the biggest issue. Trust was. A man can recover from a disappointing season. It is a lot harder to recover from knowing somebody looked you in the eye, knew exactly what you expected, and did the opposite the minute you weren’t sitting beside him. And if that man happens to be family, that kind of mess has a way of hanging around long after deer season is over.